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I stood then, dizzy from her words. They made no sense, not yet. But I would learn Sorina often talked in riddles and broken songs. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
She hopped off the grave then, bringing the item she had pulled out of her top to me. It was an offering; her pale hand was a cup, and I would drink from it.
When she was close enough, I saw the joint. I’d seen someone with one once, outside of a diner. The musky odor drew me in, and I’d walked toward the man before he gave me a dirty look and walked to his car.
I knew what it was, but I was hesitant. It’d been ingrained in us at the ranch to keep our minds and bodies pure. What a fucking joke.
But the spear was not a weapon, not in his mind.
“What’s that?” I asked, though I knew.
“It’ll help you sleep. No more dreams, no more nightmares.”
“You know, we had a D.A.R.E. meeting at school last week. You weren’t there. I don’t think you should give drugs to a fellow student.”
“I’m not a student there,” Sorina said, procuring a lighter from her pocket. She lit the joint, then pulled a slow drag. Her eyes turned black for a second, and I almost didn’t see it. After that, I convinced myself it was a trick of the light.
When she was done, she offered the joint to me, and I took it, pulling it to my lips.
I imagined I could taste her as I inhaled, eyes closed, registering a hand around my wrist, an urge to keep it there. I held my breath until Sorina motioned for me to release it.
She smiled then; it was the first time I saw her teeth. Her incisors were slightly longer than the rest. I imagined them on my neck, my chest, and the skin of my thigh.
The euphoria that overtook me was instant. The small places she’d touched me pulsed, and when I looked at her, her teeth seemed to elongate, her eyes turned full black, and her hair glowed red.
“Fuck, is this … is this what it’s always like?”
Sorina took the joint, bringing it to her lips. When she was done, she puffed the air into my face. “No. You won’t find anything like this anywhere else.”
I remember little else after that. I know Sorina took my arm and led me out of the woods to the bench by my window, and somehow she carried me in through the open window and laid me in my bed.
She said I wouldn’t dream, but what else could the memories be? I felt her crawl under the covers, strip her clothes off slowly, and help me with mine. She didn’t touch me; she laid there, watching me, watching my eyes fight fatigue, pushing the hair from my brow, whispering something in my ear. Though I didn’t know what.
EIGHT
On the hardest nights, Valerie remembered their coupling, the forms of their body, so unlike anything she imagined she and Gregory would have done. He’d treated her like folded glass. Sodelicate.Did he not know the old wives’ tales? That redheads could endure pain to a greater degree than any others?
She wanted him to do such things to her.
Through the cracked door, she’d seen Gregory’s white knuckles, Serendipity’s black hair wound tight. Her sister glistened, sweat on her brow, and her face was pure ecstasy. Valerie felt like an intruder—watching them like that. The loud voice she wanted to wield stayed small inside of her, and she watched Gregory’s narrow waist move back and forth behind Serendipity. The thud of their skin slapping together over and over muffled her heartbeat, and there was a ringing in her ears.
Valerie’s vision had blurred as she gripped the wall and stepped back away from the sight.
It was heartbreaking to walk away from the deceit, to walk away from the crime of sister on sister. To keep it quiet.
And she could not.
Instead, Valerie walked to the bathroom down the hall, far from their slapping skin. Her own was hot and flushed. She wanted to run water and splash some on her face, but she didn’t want them to know she was there. She couldn’t look herself in the eye as she left the room, slinking down the stairs. When she reached the front door, she opened it wide, the winter air slapping her in the face. She closed her eyes and stepped back.
In another life she would have slammed the door loud enough for them to hear. She would have forgotten the way the betrayal felt like a knife every time she was near them. She would have made sure her sister didn’t get caught by her parents after they returned from their movie.
But in that life, she didn’t. She closed her eyes, wiped her tears, and slowly shut the door. She walked into the kitchen and grabbed the knife from the block. Cold German steel, forged and heavy.
On the hardest nights, Valerie rememberedthatnight, and she had nowhere to go with her aching chest.
But now she had somewhere to go.
She left the trailer before dusk, earlier than she needed to leave to prep the kitchen. She wanted to see the church, see where the Deacon worshiped, see if forgiveness could find her in the dark. The townsfolk said you could see the entire town from the lookout point across the gravel road, and Valerie parked there to get a look at the home attached to the small Catholic church.
